Keyword search in WORD '10, '13

Hello  again. Thanks for bearing with me on this pesky problem. I tried the scannow utility, which reported no errors. Nevertheless, nice to know about that. Then, I began to check everything possible that might be causing the problem. I did some experimenting  by entering  a dummy keyword in one and another document  to test whether  Explorer was finding anything at all. Indeed, it was. But the particular documents into which I had entered new keywords was still not found using keywords I had entered and had confirmed were registered. I then noticed that these particular documents had a number as the first keyword, a year (1867). On the odd chance that this number was causing the problem, I removed it from the first position among the keywords and put it last. Voilà! Everything worked. All the newly entered keywords were found when I searched with Explorer. Now, Microsoft might well dispute that a number like 1867 at the head of the keyword list could cause a problem, but it did for me. As soon as I removed it altogether, I was able to find the documents through Explorer as well as in Word's open dialog.  I then added the keyword 1867 to the end of the list, and the document was found using other keywords, and using 1867 iin a keyword search. Problem solved (apparently).

As far as I know, there's no limit to the number of keywords. There might be a limit on the total number of characters in the Tag field, but I wasn't able to find any documentation of that.

You can use spaces as separators, as shown in my screen shots. I think semicolons are the "official" preference, but on my PC spaces work as intended.

Since the problem seems to be in Windows Explorer, you might try using the System File Checker to see if it will "fix" that program. See http://pcsupport.about.com/od/toolsofthetrade/ht/sfc-scannow.htm.

It doesn't  seem to matter what I do. I can search the whole computer,  I can specify the C: drive as a whole, I can specify  the exact directory in which I know the document exists  with the keyword I am searching for: nothing works. It is as Word and the entire OS cannot see the file in question, or any others in that directory, for some reason. The entire keyword search function appears to be broken on my computer. I know exactly where the file is; I know it's exact keywords (about 10 of them). I specify the directory, or if you levels above that directory, and search for a particular keyword, and Explorer and Word (if I use its open dialogue) simply cannot find the file. I also discovered that if I omit the keyword: or tag: qualifier, and just search for a word I know that is in the particular file, even then it is not found.

A few questions:

1. Is there a limit to the number of keywords I can assign? Could 10 B too many?
2. Is it necessary to separate the keywords with commas, or just separate them with a space?

My keywords are entered with just a space in between them, no commas.

Of course, the saved searches should function no differently. At the time that I created those searches and saved them, the search function worked perfectly, finding all documents with the specified keywords. Now, it appears I can find none when I specify new keywords. I haven't yet tried creating a new document and assigning it keywords, and then searching for those keywords. I have been talking about existing files  to which I have added new keywords,, which are then not found. This whole situation is most unfortunate. For an academic like me, being unable to search on keywords and turn up specific documents amid hundreds of others, the lack of a keyword search function is a huge disadvantage.

I can't explain that behavior.

I can tell you that the dialogs in Word, including the search boxes, are provided by the Windows Explorer code file and/or the many DLL files that it calls. So it's no surprise that the searches fail in the same way in both places.

I don't know how Explorer handles saved searches, or whether it's any different from the way it handles newly input searches -- I would think the actual search is the same, regardless of how the search expression is entered.

Is it possible that the new searches are starting with a restriction to a particular part of the drive, such as the Documents folder? Below the area where files should appear, there's a "Search again in" group of icons; when it says "No items match your search", try clicking the Computer icon to search the whole drive.

The answer in both cases is yes; the keywords/tags I assigned do appear in the places you describe. Nevertheless, when I try to search using the keywords (both in Explorer and in Word's open dialogue, no documents appear in the search result. This essentially makes assigned keywords/tags useless. I don't understand. I should add this. In the past, I have assigned keywords, successfully searched for documents containing them, and saved the searches. I can still use those saved searches and turn up the documents that contain those keywords. Yet  no keyword that I now assign, even though it is saved to the document, will produce the document in a search.